New Home Affordability Little Changed, New Homes Remain Just Above Affordable Threshold

New homes sold in the United States remained out of the affordable reach of the typical American household for the 42nd consecutive month.

As measured by the percentage of median household income needed to cover the monthly mortgage payment for the median new home sold in August 2025, the cost of homeownership for that household would consume 37.5% of its monthly income.

That’s slightly above the upper 36% of household income threshold that lenders have historically used to determine whether they will loan money to a household that has no other debt. For households that do carry other debt, lenders prefer their monthly mortgage payments consume no more than 28% of their pre-tax household income.

This percentage is slightly higher than the preceding month’s figure but is still lower than the much of the preceding three and a half years worth of data for this measure and remains very close to the upper threshold of affordability. The latest update of our chart tracks the changing relative affordability of the typical new home sold in the U.S. is for the typical American household with respect to the mortgage lending industry’s key affordability thresholds from January 2000 through August 2025.

Here are the components of the affordability math:

• The initial estimate of the price of median new home sold in August 2025 was $413,000, which is up from July’s initial $400,000 estimate.
• We conservatively estimate median household income to be $84,466 for August 2025, up from July’s $83,743 estimate.
• The interest rate for a conventional 30-year fixed rate mortgage average 6.59% in August 2025, almost a quarter point lower than July’s average of 6.72%.

With both median household income up and average mortgage rates down, we find the small increase in unaffordability was driven by the increase in the median sale price of a new home in August 2025.

Looking forward, we find the interest rate for a conventional 30-year fixed rate mortgage average dropped almost a quarter point in September 2025, which provides a tailwind for improving affordability. We anticipate median household income will continue rising during the month, so the wild card factor affecting the affordability math will be September 2025′s median new home sale price.

It’s quite possible we may see the median new home sale price drop into the affordable range for the typical American household in the next few months.

Analyst’s Notes

The affordability crisis for new homes has its origin in the high inflation that was unleashed by the Biden-Harris administration’s policies in March 2021. Although it rose slowly at first, the cost of monthly mortgage payment began to skyrocket after December 2021. As a percentage of median household income, the monthly mortgage payment for a new home climbed above the key 36% threshold of relative affordability in April 2022, remaining above it in every month since.

We use a zero-down payment scenario to assess affordability because it provides a simple way to account for the opportunity costs of paying a down payment when buying a new home for many homebuyers. There are also several lending programs for qualified homebuyers that do provide a zero-down payment option to try to make buying a home more affordable, so it is also a realistic scenario on its own, though the majority of homebuyers do use money saved to make a down payment when they buy a home.

References

U.S. Census Bureau. New Residential Sales Historical Data. Houses Sold. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 24 September 2025. 

U.S. Census Bureau. New Residential Sales Historical Data. Median and Average Sale Price of Houses Sold. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 24 September 2025. 

Freddie Mac. 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgages Since 1971. [Online Database]. Accessed 26 September 2025. Note: Starting from December 2022, the estimated monthly mortgage rate is taken as the average of weekly 30-year conventional mortgage rates recorded during the calendar month.

Image Credit: A person reaching out with house keys toward their wallet photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash.